Mongolian coal shipments to China fall sharply on customs glitches

Coal shipments from Mongolia to China's Ganqimaodu border port -- a major import gateway in the northern Chinese region of Inner Mongolia -- fell sharply to just 759 trucks on October 13, after a system failure at Mongolian Customs, Mysteel learned from sources.

The truck count marked a steep 33.8% drop from the daily average recorded over October 8-11. However, sources said that customs clearance operations resumed normalcy on Monday afternoon, suggesting that shipments could have recovered to over 1,000 trucks today. Recently, market speculation suggested that Erdenes Tavantolgoi JSC (ETT) -- Mongolia's